Stacking power amps mono blocks

I do not believe a half inch is enough space. Not only should you be concerned about the lower unit, but also the tube amp above, so much heat in a tight space is probably not good for either of them. I would take ed's advice and buy a couple of amp stands. If you do get the stands, take a look at a thread here on agon about spk cable verses interconnect lengths, I don't personnally have any experience on cable lengths but the people who commented on the thread made some interesting comments. I would try both ways short interconnect and then long inter, with spk cables going short and then long. You may end up achieving a new level of performance. Good luck and let those amps breath. Pete

Thanks everyone. Seems as I am not the only one struggling with this. Since I do not like the empty shelf in the stand, it look weird with a hole and 8 inch of air. I need to look into one of two options.
1. Move the stereo so I can have one poweramp on each side of the target stand. Preamp on the bottom shelf. Interconnects of 3 ft will work.
2. Buy a stand that can take the ams and maybe has something like a 12 " space between the amp shelves.
Does and amp stand improve the sound? This is too much for me?

Amp stands will improve the sound of most tube amps (I haven't experimented with SS) even top of the line amps. I personally use long speaker cables (Dunlavy to match my speakers). I have my monoblocks side by side with amp stands on top of oak platforms isolated from the floor with inner tubes. There have been several good threads about isolation as well as amp stands.

Abstract, would you please explain? What do you mean by "routed and sandwitched with marbles"? I am thinking of using aluminium tubes of about 2.5 inches for the same purpose. Please enlighten..thanks

I agree that stacking the amps is NOT a good idea in terms of heat dissipation. If the amps are high bias designs, i would recommend appr 8" of free space above them. This lets the heat rise out of them unimpeded. In your case, not only is heat trapped in the bottom amp, what does rise out is only helping to cook the top amp. NOT a good thing in any aspect.

Unfortunately, I can't offer any good suggestions. I was also in that boat but ended up changing racks for similar reasons. Since all of my amps ( except two ) are all very richly biased and run hot, i didn't want then cooking to death. As such, i hated loosing a shelf or having a giant "dead space". To correct this situation, i ended up changing racks. I can now adjust the shelf height on several of my racks. This now gives me the ability to accomodate ANY situation or component AND the looks that i was searching for. Sean
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